Every great idea has its flip side. This is more so in the case of an idea becoming hugely popular, where followers and promoters tend to overemphasise its benefits and completely overlook any shadow it conceals. It often has less to do with the idea itself than with the way people tend to interpret it, make assumptions beyond the scope of the idea, and holding on to it even in the face of its failure. Martin Seligman who established the field of positive psychology, warned that optimism “… may sometimes keep us from seeing reality with the necessary clarity.”
While my own natural tendency is to value the positive over the negative, to support a general positive attitude over one that prefers to see the worst in situations and in other people, i believe, that for understanding any situation, making any choice, when you only focus on the positive, is to set yourself up for disappointment at the least, and to bad choices, frustration and hopeless depression at the worst.
The opposite of positive thinking is not negative thinking. Both modes of thinking, when they are exclusively relied upon, tend to narrow one’s focus and block out other options, so we can end up stuck in a restricted band of possibility.
Forced positive thinking evokes doubt, uncertainty, ambivalence, blame, fear – but these are submerged, unacknowledged emotions, that drain people without their knowing why. True positive thinking starts by embracing reality in its myriad shapes and forms; it involves the ability to feel negative emotions when you have to, and still maintain enough hope to keep on going.
